Letter Never Sent to Mom

Dear Mom,

Please expect a package from Apple. Hopefully it will arrive before Thanksgiving and give you some comfort about you and Dad not being with any of your children for the holiday. The package contains a photo album I made on my Mac, something surprisingly less labor intensive than assembling an album the old-fashioned way.

You and I have never been close, and regrettably each of us is rarely able to fulfill the emotional needs of the other. With you having passed your 87th birthday and me aspiring to the maturity permitting me to accept that which I cannot change, I wanted to fulfill a simple request you made.

Earlier this week, during the course of one of our infrequent telephone conversations, you told me you had never received any photos from Daphne and Etan’s wedding, just one year ago tomorrow. Had I less of an edge, I would not have chosen to tell you that if Dad hadn’t installed what I consider to be an insane configuration of firewalls and anti-virus software on his Dell computer, you might have received the high resolution pics I’d e-mailed you shortly after the wedding.

Your request came only after you began the conversation by asking me about the weather in Boston. I’m not sure whether you realize that questions about the weather or what I cooked for dinner drive me up the wall, because I consider them attempts to evade any real efforts at communication. The kinder gentler side of me responded by saying: “Mom, you didn’t call me to talk about the weather.”

Surprisingly you said you only wanted to talk to me because I’m your daughter and you love me. It was a rare moment of candor that touched me enough to make me want to make something for you.

We spoke a little about whether you and Dad will return to Florida for a month or two this winter, and you told me you preferred to stay in your retirement community in North Carolina, where you know people. I also told you Daphne and I are taking a mother-daughter trip to Paris in January, and you seemed happy for us.

I offered to burn you a disc of wedding photos, and you seemed eager to get it. I also said that I might not get to it for a while, which was my way of warning you not to bug me about it. But then I realized that the chances of you and Dad ever ordering or even viewing photos from the disc would be slim.

It also occurred to me that you wanted to show the pics to people you know. And unless you’re walking into the dining hall with Dad’s Dell desktop, you can’t do that with a disc.

Never the artsy crafty type, I’m not going to tell you the book I made you is especially professional looking. Had I taken more care, each photo would have been arranged to reflect sequential phases of the wedding. But when I got to the end of the Apple template for photo albums, I realized that I didn’t have enough pics and went back to find more.

Dad is likely to be lukewarm when it arrives and say something like “very nice.” Or if he expresses any real interest, he will want to know the technical details of how I put the book together. As a mother who put her daughter’s very worst finger paintings on the refrigerator, you will compensate with your highest praise mode, suggesting the creator of the book is an artistic genius. Frankly, neither response will feel right to me, and that’s more my problem than yours.

Love,xxxxxBonnie